Of Snowball Fights and Snowbunnies
by Kitsuru
Summary: “I’m sure of it!” Orihime repeated with a grin. “And then we can go back to having that snowball fight and making snow angels and snowmen and snow-women and snow-bunnies and maybe even a snow seaweed ambassador!” -Ichihime, other pairings implied-


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bleach or the Matrix. I'm also aware that the time machine bit has nothing to do with the latter… but Orihime's imagination conquers all!

**A/N: **This was written as a holiday giftfic for Misa_Misa! _ at FLOL. She hasn't come online for a while, though, so I don't think she's read it yet. But I also don't think she'd mind me sharing it with all of you. I hope you enjoy it more than I did writing it... I was hit by a pretty bad bout of writers block while working on this.

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He had to keep moving. He couldn't stay still, couldn't let himself become a target. That last attack had almost grazed him, and had hit the enemy approaching from behind, unnoticed, unsuspected, and in an easy position to take him down. More flew by even as he ran, gluing himself to the trees and hunching over to avoid the worst of it. His eyes were darting around, searching for some semblance of shelter; left, right, center—_DUCK_!

He threw himself ground-wards and felt the projectile ruffle his hair in its passing. Heaving a silent sigh of relief, he staggered to his feet… and found himself with a face-full of previously well-packed snow.

The teen spluttered, clawing at the cold, stinging _wet_ that covered his face, blinding him, _what if—too late._ He could hear several familiar sniggers, guffaws, and all-out, rolling on the ground cackling. Wiping away the last of the snow, he favored the perpetrators with his trademark scowl. "Oh, shut up."

His answer was another snowball to the face, which he _almost_ managed to dodge… before he noticed a huge wave of ice heading for the same spot he was. He froze—no pun intended—and mere moments later was wiping off yet more snow.

"RUKIA!" He sputtered at the sound of cackling. "We agreed; no zanpaku-to!"

"You think that the Arrancar are going to be that nice?" She taunted, hefting her elegant white blade over her shoulder.

"The war's over you idiot, and besides, this is just a—" And right on cue, a third roughly shaped sphere of snow and ice smacked him in the face. "…Snowball fight."

"Kurosaki-kun!" A familiar head poked up out from behind a particularly tall mound of snow, a multitude of colorful specks flying around her. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit you in the face, are you okay?"

"Stop worrying, woman!" Yelled the darkest one. "You throw like a girl, you couldn't hurt him if your life depended on it!"

"Inoue!" Rukia shouted. "No using your Rikka!"

"Says the hypocrite of a midget with the sword." Ichigo muttered, earning himself another snowball. He managed to dodge that one, at least.

"As funny as this is, if we let you two go at it we'd be here until the New Year, so I think we'd better cut this fight short." A new voice drawled. Everyone froze and turned slowly, just in time to see three figures, one with an oversized energy bow, another with transmogrified hands, and the third with a skeletal leviathan of a serpent curled around him.

All of them carried snowballs. And all of them were grinning just a little too widely for comfort. The trio felt a chill of fear make its way down their spines, and then—

"Hikōtsu Taihō!"

"La Muerte!"

Ichigo was by no means an idiot, at least not academically. In other words, he had quite a nice vocabulary at his disposal. However, he could really only think of two words to use in a situation such as the one they were in now, with a tidal wave of snow to rival—if not surpass—Rukia's second dance towering over them.

"Oh, sh—" He crouched, trying desperately to brace himself enough so that he wouldn't be washed away in the frozen torrent.

"Santen Kisshun!"

He blinked, and looked up just in time to see the snow come crashing down against a familiar golden glow, less than two feet above his head. "Inoue?"

"Nani, Kurosaki-kun?" She turned her head to smile at him, before refocusing on the snow.

"Um, thanks." He wondered why he wasn't surprised to see his friend helping him in a game where they were all against each other, but then again, this _was_ Orihime. He'd seen her run through a heated battlefield to heal an enemy. In a snowball fight, of course she'd go for teamwork even when it was supposed to be a free-for-all.

He looked past her, through the shield. "Is it still coming?"

She bit her lip. "Hai… they were really enthusiastic, weren't they?"

"I'd use stronger words." Ichigo muttered, and Orihime giggled. After the laughter had faded away, though, there was silence.

"Sounds like it's over." The orange-haired teen said, and started to stand up… only to hit his head on the golden shield. "OW!"

"Kurosaki-kun, daijoubu?"

"I'm fine, don't worry about it," he managed through teeth gritted in pain. _Man, that shield is almost as hard as her head..._

"Let's get out of here, then." The substitute shinigami grinned. Once they were out, he'd teach the others a lesson they'd never forget, possibly involving snow and places it really didn't belong.

"Hai!" Orihime nodded, and put a hand to her hairpins, waiting for her shield to vanish… and frowning as nothing happened. "Um… Hinagaiku? Baigon? Lily? Is something the matter?"

"Gomen, Orihime-chan," Lily began. There was a definite twinge of worry in her voice. "But… um…"

"It's complicated." Baigon interjected. "You see, we _can't_ go back."

"What do you mean?" The girl's eyes widened. "Did I use you too much? Did the wind change and make it so that you were stuck like that? I'm so sorry, forgive me!"

"No, no, nothing like that!" Hinagaiku hurriedly assured her. "It's just… as the moment… we're the only things holding all of this snow up. The trees are helping… but not enough."

The two teen's blinked, and, after a moment, Ichigo rolled his eyes. "There can't be _that_ much of it."

"You'd be surprised." The single female of the shielding Shunshun Rikka said bluntly.

"Especially considering Kuchiki-san's Hakuren technique." Hinagaiku added. "It's likely that she tried using it to repel the snow that buried us, which means…"

"On top of all of this snow, there's ice." Baigon finished with a sigh.

"Wait a second," the substitute shinigami had faced down Zaraki Kenpachi without panicking—or at least, without panicking _too much_. He had beaten Kuchiki Byakuya and yelled at him all of the while. He had leapt into battle against Grimmjow and Ulquiorra without the slightest hesitation.

But if the three fairies were telling him what he thought they were telling him… well, then that would definitely be a chill of fear spreading down his spine. "Are you saying… we're stuck down here?"

"Don't worry, Kurosaki-kun!" There was a forced lightness in his friends' tone, but it calmed him slightly. "Kuchiki-san and the others are probably digging us out right this second!"

------

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T SENSE THEM?!"

"Exactly what I said." Ishida said, pushing his glasses farther up his nose in an attempt to hide his own growing concern. "The snow is filled with reiatsu, and the ice is _made_ of it. Something that you of all people should be aware of."

"Get to the point!" Rukia snapped, folding her arms and raising her chin out of the warm folds of her scarf. Renji couldn't help but stare at that little bit of exposed neck for a moment, even as Ishida—who must have been similar to Yumichika in more than just hair color the way he didn't even _look,_ regardless of all of those rumors he'd been hearing lately about the Quincy and the vice-captain of the Twelfth—continued his explanation.

"I can't sense them." He repeated bluntly. "Your own reiatsu is interfering, along with that of the rest of us." The youngest surviving Quincy sighed. "It seems that we went a bit overboard, didn't we?"

"That's one way of putting it." Chad acquiesced.

"I'd use stronger words…" Rukia grumbled. "You idiots, what were you thinking?!"

"Excuse me, Ice Queen?" Renji retorted. "That's at least four feet of solid ice that you made!"

"And what about your _fifteen_ feet of snow?! We can't barely see the tops of the trees now, thanks to you!"

"It wasn't my fault!"

"Don't try pinning the blame for this on us." Ishida cut in.

"What are you talking about?" Demanded the redhead, his tattooed forehead wrinkling as he glared at his white-garbed friend. "It was _your_ idea in the first place!"

"The idea was sound," Ishida argued, noticing the way that the temperature of the air around the woman watching them was getting lower with each passing second. "It was you who—"

Chad sighed. Clearly, they weren't going to get any planning done for a while, if ever. It looked as though he'd have to start without them.

He glanced around, and then started heading towards the few bits of green and brown that poked up through the ice. If memory served, Ichigo and Orihime had been on the outskirts of the forest when they had been buried. Hopefully, they hadn't moved much since then.

He gathered reiatsu in his arm… and in an instant; a large chunk of the ice surrounding him had shattered. The snow beneath was the heavy stuff, not the light and fluffy type. Perfect for making snowballs, but not as wonderful for digging through to rescue your friends.

He sighed, and got to work.

------

"I'm sure of it!" Orihime repeated with a grin. "And then we can go back to having that snowball fight and making snow angels and snowmen and snow-women and snow-bunnies and maybe even a snow seaweed ambassador!"

"…A what now?"

"Kuchiki-san told me about him! And then the snow seaweed ambassador will take us to the arctic Atlantis and we'll be able to see all of the mermaids and mermen and mer-bunnies, too!"

"Er…"

"Oh, and maybe we'll even be able to see—"

"Hey, Inoue," he began, desperately trying to get back to a conversational topic that _didn't_ make his head hurt. "Thanks again for helping me out back there."

"It was nothing!" She replied. "That's what friends do after all, right?"

He frowned. At the word 'friends', the smile on Orihime's face grew a bit more forced, a bit more fake. She couldn't make herself be happy, he reflected, no matter how cheerful she was when she didn't have to.

He didn't like seeing her like that, though. There was a twinge in his chest as he looked at that stretched expression. "Don't worry."

"Nani?"

"We'll be out of here soon," he explained, looking away into the whiteness of the snow around them. "So don't worry about it. We'll be fine, and we can do all of those things you were talking about earlier."

He paused, remembering what she had said. "Well, most of them at least."

For a long moment, the caramel-haired girl was silent. Neither of the teens looked in the direction of the other, studiously examining their monotone surroundings.

"Arigatou," he heard her say at last, after what may have been an eternity or merely a few minutes. "Arigatou, Kurosaki-kun."

"Not a problem," he replied.

And it hadn't been, for the slight difference in her voice was enough to send warmth into his half-frozen limbs. Although he could tell that there was still something troubling her… but as to what that was, he didn't have the slightest idea.

But even if he didn't know whatever it was, he could tell he wouldn't like it if he did. Anything that could put an expression like that one on his friends' face… he shook his head, fighting back a scowl.

He had once worried about her because of her cheerfulness. She had seemed so obliviously happy… she had let a car almost run over her without even attempting to confront the driver. Admittedly, there had been her Hollowfied brother to think of in that situation, but most people would have at least tried to get the license plate number of whoever had hit them.

He had thought back then that it had been because of her naiveté. She could be hit by a falling anvil and think it an accident, and go on whistling. But now… now he could see that as often as she was happy, she was hiding her sorrows behind a smile, and he wondered how he could have ever been so blind as to not see them.

He wished he knew what sorrows those were. He was a guardian, after all, and he'd always done his best to keep those around him safe… it was only natural that he'd want to protect their happiness as well.

_Especially hers._

Wait, where had that come from? He wanted to protect all of their happiness, equally, didn't he? She was his nakama, along with Rukia, Chad, Ishida, and Renji. A friend he'd risk his life for, and vice-versa.

Although if she ever got killed for his sake, he'd go to soul Society and… and… do something nonviolent to her. And something that wouldn't get him treated to that guilty puppy look she didn't know that she was so adept at. But whatever he did would make it clear that she had to stop being such a self-sacrificing idiot. In nicer words, of course… she wasn't the sort that someone could yell at or insult.

And if they did, he vowed silently, he'd beat them to a pulp and make them apologize to her.

"Kurosaki-kun?" The girl he was thinking about called, concerned. "Is something the matter?"

"Don't worry about me, I'm fine." Ichigo looked at her. Her forced smile was gone, replaced with worry for him. She was always thinking of everyone else, why didn't she ever fret over herself? "Inoue… daijoubu?"

"Nani?" She blinked. "I'm fine, why do you ask?"

"You just…" He hesitated for a moment. What if she didn't want to talk about it? He took a chance, and asked anyways. "You looked sad. What's wrong?"

"It's—I'm fine, Kurosaki-kun!" Ichigo frowned as he noticed how red her cheeks were, and wished she had dressed warmer. Three layers weren't enough when you're buried in snow. "I—"

"Inoue, I'm your friend, aren't I?" He asked. "I'm pretty sure I know you well enough by now to know that there's something bothering you."

"It's… um…" She couldn't tell him the truth. She wanted to, but… _what if he doesn't…_

"It's the abominable snow monkeys!" She declared at last.

------

"This isn't working." Ishida sighed, climbing out of the admittedly large hole that they had dug after they had noticed Chad tunneling through the snow. "We don't know how much farther we have to go, and we don't even know if we're anywhere near where they are.

"We could dig for hours and not find them." Rukia agreed with a sigh. "We need to come up with another idea."

Renji opened his mouth, and the Quincy shot him a Look. "One that _doesn't_ involve blasting anything. We could hit them."

"It's not like it would kill them!" The redhead protested. "Besides, Inoue could heal the damage—OW! RUKIA!"

The other shinigami hit him again, scowling. "This isn't the Eleventh Division! Ichigo and Inoue aren't crazy and masochistic… well, Inoue isn't!"

"I'm not saying that they are—but better hurt than dead, right? And we'd be careful, we wouldn't use all of our power!"

"It's too risky, what if you kill them by accident?"

"Rukia, this is _Ichigo_. He survived Zaraki-taichou, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to kill him even if we were going all-out. And Inoue probably has her shield up… they'll be fine." When the adopted member of the Kuchiki clan said nothing more, the vice-captain took it as acceptance and gave a slightly manic grin. "Now… let's get started."

-------

He blinked. "The what?"

"The abominable snow monkeys!" Orihime repeated, with more confidence this time. "They've been seen near this area, haven't you heard?"

"Inoue, we fight Hollows every day." He reminded her. "I don't think that you need to be afraid of _monkeys._"

"I'm not afraid of them!" She protested. "It's just—what if they got buried too?" Her eyes widened with horror. "And what about the other animals in the forest? They don't have shields!"

"They're fine." Ichigo was smiling slightly. "All of the birds and animals left after Rukia drew her zanpaku-to, remember? I'm pretty sure that they managed to stay out of this mess."

"You're probably right…" The girl agreed, but there was still worry in her tone.

The orange-haired teen closed his eyes, barely holding back a sigh. He wasn't good at this—the words "psychic monkey" were still pretty clear in his memory—but he had to try. He searched for those bits of warmth that was the reiatsu of living beings and spirits… and found only four familiar flames.

"I can't sense any animals," he said as he opened his eyes, "so they probably escaped."

"Arigatou," she looked oddly surprised, "you didn't have to—"

"It was no problem, I need to practice sensing reiatsu anyways." He looked up, at the golden shield… and an idea hit him. "Hey, Inoue… I think I know how we can get out of here."

"Really?"

"Hai," he hesitated, "but I need you to trust me."

She smiled, and for once hid no sorrow behind it. There was a bittersweetness to it… but it was a smile of one telling a complete truth, and nothing else. "I already do."

"Great." He smiled back at her, not the false grin that he saved for his mother's anniversary, but a true smile. She decided that she liked it even more than his frown. "Here's what we're going to do…"

-------

"All right, everyone get back!" Renji shouted, standing over the hole and holding out his arm. "Ye Lord, mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man—"

------

"You ready?" Hand enfolded in the warmth it had never known it had been missing, Orihime nodded.

"Are you?" Hand enfolded in the warmth it had never known it had been missing, Ichigo nodded.

Golden light gleamed on metal, and the shield shattered.

-------

"—Inferno and Pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on the south! Hadou Thirty-one—"

"GETSUGA TENSHOU!"

"Renji, wait a—!"

"–SOUKATSUI!"

------

"It's strange, isn't it?" Urahara asked conversationally, attempting to hide a smile behind his fan. "That a snowball fight, of all things, could end with a call to the fire department."

"Shut up." Ichigo muttered.

"I _told_ Renji not to try any kidou, but did he listen?" Rukia glared at the redhead, who glared right back.

"It got them out, didn't it?"

"We were _already_ out!" The substitute shinigami reminded him

"Yeah, but we didn't know that!" Renji snapped. "And how was I supposed to know that coats in this world are so flammable?"

"It's common sense, you moron!" His childhood friend growled. "Fabric burns. It's the same way in the Soul Society!"

"So?"

"So _what_?"'

"Midget!'

"Funny eyebrows!"

"Bad artist!"

"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!"

"They remind me of one of those happily married elderly couples. In fact, I give them a few years before they end up being just that." The shopkeeper commented in an aside to Yoruichi. He reflected that he had spent too much time in the living world; to think that being in one's sixty's qualified them for being elderly.

He thought ruefully that he was positively _ancient_… and tried very hard not to think of what the soutaichou would be referred to as.

"I wouldn't be surprised." The former captain of the Second Division nodded thoughtfully, and then gave a Cheshire-cat grin. "But as for them reminding me of marriage veterans, I'm not so sure. After all, they don't look that much like _us_…"

"Ah, but Yoruichi-san, you are young yet! Why, any supermodel would be envious of not only your beauty, but also your youthful—wait." Urahara blinked as the rest of what his friend was implying sunk in, and then winced. "Whatever happened to 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?'"

"It stayed in Vegas. Although…" She purred, and gave him a wink that made his heart skip a beat. "Maybe we could—"

"Kuchiki-san!"

"Rukia, what the—"

"Disintegrate, black dog of Rodanini!"

"Now, now," the former captain of the Twelfth hurriedly stepped between the feuding friends, hoping to spare his beloved—and highly flammable, _damnit_, what was he thinking when he decided not to bother making it fireproof despite his own love of explosions—shop the havoc that could be wreaked by a kidou specialist and a veteran of the Eleventh division fighting in a wooden building. "It's in the past now, so why don't we leave it there?"

Orihime blinked. "Well, of course we'd leave it in the past. We can't time travel yet, after all, and even if we could we'd probably destroy the world as we know it by accidentally stopping someone from being born, and then we'll return to a future where all of us are slaves to an entire civilization of robots without even knowing it! THERE IS NO SPOON!!"

By the end of her shouting, she was waving her arms in the air frantically. Everyone but the adopted member of the Kuchiki clan and Ichigo edged away from her slightly, and even the first couldn't help but give her friend a little sidelong 'ooooookay then…' glance.

Ichigo just shook his head slightly and smiled, a tiny smile that almost went completely unnoticed save for a few… one of whom was Yoruichi, who leaned towards the frowning Urahara.

_She has a point, _the shopkeeper was thinking rather regretfully,_ I'd better hide that prototype time machine in the basement…_

"Do you know what _they_ remind me of?" The former captain of the Second Division purred, jolting him out of his thoughts. She indicated where Orihime was now regaling the resigned but content Ichigo with the tale of how the robots were in league with the mutant brain slugs to take out the snow Seaweed Ambassador. "A pair of newlyweds."

"Give them a few years, and they'll probably be just that." Urahara agreed, covering his grin with his fan. He would still have to hide the time machine, though.

And by the sound of it, his slug experiments as well.

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**A/N:** Review, please? Don't make me break out the puppy-dog eyes…


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